But what exactly is clowning?
I figured you might ask.
In this post, I will do a bit more of an exploration of what clowning is (at least from what I know of it). In the future, I can do another post to talk more about some history of clowning.
This is going to be some basics about terminology of clowning, and what it is compared to other theatre styes. What can you expect when you come to see a clown show?
Are there going to be red noses? Balloon animals? Audience interaction?
Then, I also have an interview with the director of Bean & Hat, Davey Calderon, who will talk a bit about his journey into clowning and what it’s like to direct a clown show.
Let’s jump into it.
Clowning. There are a lot of strong images, memories, and ideas that are conjured when you someone says the word clowning. Maybe you think of a party clown with giant shoes, tight curls, and a creepy smile who would tie up balloon animals and make silly jokes when you were a kid? Maybe you picture Pennywise the clown from It. Or perhaps you think of Ronald McDonald, the fast-food mascot who always terrified me as a kid.
There is a long history of clowning from across many cultures, and for the sake of time, I will be focusing on what I know from training in Le Coq, Gaulier, but primarily, the Canadian style of clowning from Richard Pochinko.
Some basic elements of clowning:
1. Connection with the audience.
This might be a moment of sharing a performer’s emotions through their physical body and voice with the audience, or even a performer entering the audience and talking directly with the people sitting in their chairs.
Often in clowning (but not necessarily always) we talk about there being no 4th wall, so we are not pretending to be somewhere else, but we are acknowledging that we are in the room with the audience and that we can share in these moments and find a sense of connection in shared laughter, tears, or an acknowledgement of our human-ness.
2. Highlighting our humanity, our human-ness
The clown has traditionally been an outsider, a fool, someone who fails at basic human tasks. This role is a way of bringing light to our inherent failure(s) as humans. We are going to fail at things, and it’s fun to learn to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously. The clown brings to light human experiences.
3. The performer is the one who carries the character
The character, or “mask” that is being played is flowing through the performer. It is less about becoming someone else, like in acting, and more about using your own emotions, body, view of the world, to funnel a character into. Often in clowning the performer creates their own masks and characters as well, so they are very personal and should never feel forced.
4. It always comes back to the heart.
Especially for the Canadian style of clowning, from Richard Pochinko’s teachings, clowning is not so much about the funny gag but about the psyche of the clown. It is about taking the inner feelings and thoughts and externalizing them so that the audience can connect with and love the performer, the character that they see on stage and they can also see themselves in the character. Is is about the heart. It is about our fallible human hearts.
And hopefully it’s funny sometimes too!
Some terminology we use:
JOEY: In most clown duos, there is a “joey” and an “auguste”. You can see this dynamic in most clown duos like Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, etc. with the serious and the more silly, playful one.
The Joey is the “adult”-like clown, who is calculated, contained, more serious. In Bean & Hat, Hat is the Joey of the duo.
AUGUSTE: The Auguste is the “child”-like clown, who is innocent, curious, and more emotional. In Bean & Hat, Bean is the Auguste of the duo.
MASK: In Pochinko clowning, we create masks based on the directions of the medicine wheel, but in general we use the term “mask” to talk about a character that we are playing.
CLOWN TURN: A clown scene. Usually contains a beginning, middle, and end.
Bean & Hat is a unique type of clown show, because it is a scripted clown show. Oftentimes, as a clown, you would create a physical body and voice of a character or mask and then build a clown turn or a full show out of the physical work. In this case, I was interested in taking my clown training and smashing it together with playwriting. Using my own skills and craft as a playwright, I sat down at my laptop and wrote a clown show. This is quite unusual and was definitely an experiment in a way.
Bean & Hat is a clown show but it’s also full of snappy dialogue and character arcs and conflicts, and structure which I put into my writing. In a way, I think this is mostly a challenge for our talented performers who are working with a fast-paced script while also building the bodies, voices, and world of these characters. On top of all of that, they have to think about their connection with the audience. So it’s a lot for them but they are doing such a phenomenal job of making these characters shine and inviting us into their world. Davey, our director, is also doing an unbelievable job of shaping the world and guiding the performers to find the joy, the absurdity, and the humanity inside of Bean and Hat’s story.
I hope this helps you to see a bit more into the process and learn a bit about what clowning is.
Below, you will find an interview with our director, Davey Calderon! He’s got lots more insight into clowning and directing a clown show.
Katie: Davey, thanks for chatting with me. What’s your history with clowning?
Davey: My history with clowning is that I was a bad clown. (Davey laughs) I encountered clowning at Simon Fraser University School of Contemporary Arts, in the theatre program. It was a requirement. It was taught by someone who was well-versed in Le Coq or Gaulier, which are two French lineages of clowning. And I was terrible at it (Davey laughs again). I didn't understand entrances. I didn't understand the idea of timing, and I definitely did not understand what it meant to connect with people or what it even meant to be on stage as a clown. And so I almost failed.
And then I heard of this really cool person named David McMurray Smith, and he was someone who learned Richard Pochinko’s Canadian Clowning Technique. He was also merging it with his own history with both dance and Grotowski and what's called bio-kinetic work from his own training as a dance theater practitioner. He was making his own clowning technique. It was enticing because I also come from a Grotowski background because of SFU and I really wanted to figure clowning out because there's something that still I felt connected to, and I just didn't know what it was.
So I did what David calls “Baby Clown”, where it's like you go back into the fundamentals and you learn the language and the basis of what it is. I realized I loved clowning from that. And that was like, oh man, that was probably seven years ago. And I think from doing that work and doing even more work with David and then some other individuals, I learned so much about clowning, and it's an integral part of who I am now as an artist.
I eventually learned what it means to do an entrance for folks, and what clowning means. What clowning means to me is a way of performing connection with everyone no matter what the story is on the stage or what we call the clown scene or the turn, like the gag. I learned what that means is just making really beautiful human connections with people in the space and it's alive. I also learned about the joy and the humanity of what it means to be a clown. That's a gift that I received seven years ago and continue to hopefully proliferate to other artists as well.
Katie: Thank you so much. You kind of already answered it, but is there anything else you want to say about what clowning is to you? If someone asked you what is clowning, how would you answer them?
Davey: Yeah, I think I can elaborate. I think clowning is a way for basically one or two or a group of people to go on stage and show us all the facets of what it means to be human; the absurdity of it, like the absurdity of our emotions, the absurdity of our social interactions, the farce of things like pride and confusion and vulnerability, and it’s understood by any age group. I really think clowning gets a bad rap (Davey laughs). Yeah. Because it's been framed in film and television means, to be honest by people that don't really do it, and they have a sense of clowning as something that's scary, and part of the fear horror genre, or else that it's something that is so childlike. There's practices of clowning and foolery in many different cultures. It's important for different people's spiritualism. There’s a lot of folklore mythos surround it, especially when you use the language trickster, instead of clown, or shaman or jester. It’s all clowning and it’s all essential to entertain but also connect people together.
Katie: I agree (Katie laughs). You have so many good things to say. Okay, my last question for you is what are your thoughts about directing a clown show? What is that like?
Davey: Oh, it’s so much fun. Are you kidding me? (Davey laughs). As a director, if you are trying to pursue joy, direct a clown show! Because it’s all about following that joy, that sense of, in clown terminology we call “imminence”, trying to work with the performers to create these magical moments that the crowd that are watching are so excited to see, and then be so satisfied when it happens. It’s fun because you also have to figure out the journey to get there, and make sure it’s not convoluted in too many unnecessary details but also just enough to make it such a fun journey. So it’s kind of hard too, because it’s a fine balance of working with the performers to make sure they get to know what we call in clowning as their masks and make sure that they have all the information. And we talk about, similar in acting, what their intentions are in what they want and what they need. Some of those things are really fun and absurd. Also it’s about trying to find bits of space to play and the play is really where you can connect with the audience. It doesn’t always have to be a big thing, but it’s sometimes checking in with the audience. We always say, like a little wink or a little smirk at the audience, like a-ha to everyone and then back into the scene. Directing for clown is about weaving all of those things together, and it’s all for the purposes of imagining yourself in the audience and seeing how you too could laugh and maybe even cry and even more so, sometimes even think! (Katie and Davey laugh) That’s the privilege of directing for clown.
Katie: Thank you so much, Davey. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me!